2018年经济学人 《梦想者》书评:印度青年的美梦与噩梦(1)

（单词翻译）

 

Book Review: Young people in India

书评：印度青年

Dreams and nightmares

美梦与噩梦

A study of India's new generation finds its members as angry as they are ambitious

关于印度年轻一代的一项研究发现，印度青年的雄心有多壮阔，怒气就有多盛

Dreamers: How Young Indians are Changing the World.

《梦想者：印度青年如何改变世界》

By Snigdha Poonam.

施尼德哈·普那姆著

Vinay Singhal and his brother, Parveen, co-founded WittyFeed, a content factory that churns out clickbait, as a Facebook page in 2011.

2011年，维纳伊·辛格哈尔和其兄弟帕维恩，共同成立了WittyFeed，这是一个在Facebook页面快速大量生产吸睛内容的平台。

By 2016 it had its own website, 150 writers around the world, a valuation of $30m and a big HQ in Indore, a third-tier city about halfway¹ between Mumbai and Delhi.

到2016年，WittyFeed已经建立了自己的网站，签约了全球150名写手，估值3000万美元，在孟买和德里之间的三线城市印多尔设有一个很大的总部。

Mr Singhal has bigger aspirations² yet;

但辛格哈尔的野心远非于此；

for a while he thought he might aim to become prime minister.

曾经他还想过，将来可能会把目标设为登上印度总理宝座。

And why stop there?

为什么止步于此？

"I want to lead humanity…I want to lead Mars," he tells Snigdha Poonam, an Indian journalist.

“我想引领人类，我想超越罗马战神马耳斯，”他在印度记者施尼德哈·普那姆采访时说道。

"Dreamers: How Young Indians are Changing the World", Ms Poonam's first book, contains an abundance of bombastic³ characters.

普那姆第一本书《梦想者：印度青年如何改变世界》，描绘了很多怀有远大志向的人物。

"Eyes red f rom sleepless⁴ nights of plotting his and his country's rise to glory, Singhal can seem like the face of the new India," Ms Poonam writes.

“辛格哈尔为筹谋自身和祖国的崛起，不眠不休，双眼通红，”普那姆在书中写道。

"This new India", she adds wryly⁵, "is not always easy to like."

“这个新印度”，她以冷酷的笔触写道，“不总是容易让人爱上。”

Quite.

入木三分。

The country she describes is deeply worrying. 

她笔下的印度堪忧。

Two-thirds of India's 1.3bn citizens are under 35.

印度13亿人口中，三分之二年龄低于35岁。

Roughly 1m people enter the workforce⁶ every month.

每月约有100万人口成长为劳动力人口。

Few find jobs; most graduates are too poorly educated to be employable.

但找到工作的极少；大部分毕业生受教育程度太低，无法就业。

Meanwhile a numerical gender⁷ imbalance means many men remain single.

与此同时，性别比例失衡意味着很多男性会保持单身。

Yet India's young men—Ms Poonam's interlocutors are mostly men, because they dominate public spaces—believe they can have it all.

但印度的年轻人（普那姆女士书中采访的对象大部分为男性，因为男性在公共领域占主导地位）相信他们可以达成心之所向。

And they believe they are owed it all.

且他们认为达成所想是理所应当。

Unlike previous generations, they see the pleasures of the wider world in their Facebook feeds, Instagram timelines and WhatsApp chats,

不像之前的几代人，这代年轻人通过Facebook信息流、Instagram时间轴以及WhatsApp通讯聊天感知到广阔世界的快乐，

and wonder why everybody else goes on foreign holidays, drives imported cars, and parties with vodka and girls.

他们还想知道为什么别人都去国外度假、开进口车、参加有伏加特酒和姑娘的聚会。

They blame the Muslims, the West, the Congress government and its decades of socialism and appeasement⁸ of minorities.

这代印度年轻人批判穆斯林、指摘西方国家、驳斥印度国大党政府及其数十年社会主义和对其他宗教少数派的绥靖政策。

Now Narendra Modi, whose muscular brand of Hindu nationalism has fired up the young, is prime minister.

现在的印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪强大的印度教民族主义鼓舞了印度青年。

He will put those miscreants⁹ in their place.

莫迪将让那些不法之徒安守本分。